The processing of poultry carcasses to remove the wings or the wing tips largely has been a manual operation wherein poultry workers cut the wings from the body or torso of a poultry bird carcass, and, thereafter, either the whole wing has been packaged for sale, or the wings have been further cut at their joints to produce drumette, mid-wing, and wing-tip portions for separate packaging and sale. More recently, advances have been made in the automation of poultry wing processing in an attempt by the poultry industry to keep up with the growing consumer demand for poultry wings, especially chicken wings, as evidenced by the rise in the demand for individual hot and spicy chicken wings.
Not only has the production of poultry wings been facilitated through automated processes, but manufacturing costs have been reduced, while the risk of personal injury to the poultry cutters has been reduced. However, for optimization of a poultry processing operation, it is desirable to perform as many of the processing operations as possible, including the poultry wing processing operations, while the poultry birds are suspended by their legs, for example, from a moving overhead conveyor system. This arrangement eliminates the necessity of removing the poultry bird carcasses from the conveyor and remounting them onto a separate machine for the removal of the wings, an operation that is time consuming and labor intensive.
Heretofore, the various automated methods and apparatus that have been developed for cutting poultry wings into individual parts usually have involved separate machines removed from the overhead conveyor line. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,016,624 to Martin et al, a poultry processing machine is disclosed that includes a wing cutting section for severing the wing tips, mid-wings, and drumettes sequentially from the body of a poultry carcass. A previously eviscerated poultry carcass is mounted manually onto a mandrel and moved through a series of wing portion severing stations wherein, among other operations, the wing tip is severed from the mid-wing. With this machine, an operator is required to mount the carcasses, which apparently was previously removed from a conveyor line of an evisceration process, onto the mandrels which is a processing step that delays the progress of the carcasses, lengthens the processing time, and increases the labor costs.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,207,653 to Gasbarro and U.S. Pat. No. 4,577,368 to Hazenbroek both disclose poultry wing processing methods whereby previously cut whole wings are placed onto a rotary wing carrier wheel and cut into wing tip, mid-wing, and drumette sections. These machines require an additional operator to place the wing portions, previously severed from the poultry carcasses, onto the rotary wing carrier wheel.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,769,872 of Hazenbroek a poultry carcass processing apparatus is disclosed for cutting the poultry wings from the poultry carcass and subsequently cutting the joints between the wing tip, mid-wing, and drumette portions. While the apparatus of this patent performs a number of cutting functions, it still requires an operator to remove the carcass form the conveyor and mount it onto the cutting apparatus.
The manual method of cutting poultry wings has many disadvantages, but it does have the advantage that the cuts between the wing joints can be made accurately. Prior art machines for cutting wings have limited capability to accommodate and adjust for poultry wings of varying sizes, which can cause poultry wing sections to be improperly cut and bone fragments to be lodged in the meat of the wings, an extremely undesirable result. U.S. Pat. No. 4,577,368, also to Hazenbroek, discloses a poultry wing processing machine designed to accommodate poultry wings of varying sizes. However, the machine of this patent is a machine remote from the main conveyor line, which, as previously stated, requires an additional operator to load the poultry wings onto the machine.
Thus, a need exists in the art for a method and apparatus for accurately severing the wing tips from the mid-wing sections of the wings of poultry carcasses as the carcasses are being conveyed by an overhead conveyor system.